I just purchased three of the Walthers 30 degree crossings mentioned above from a friend for my DCC layout; he was unsure if they were DCC friendly as was I, all the rails look to be isolated, so I ASSUME them to be DCC friendly is that accurate? Thanks for the help.
It is HO scale and code 83, so I am glad to hear I am in the clear.
I didn't find my lone 30 deg crossing to be fully DCC, so it confounded my PSX-AR because the crossing made my turning wye a scissors-type. I was able to leave one route fully metal-connected, but I had to cut the rails at both other exits.
That was an easy fix. A far more annoying one has been trying to smooth the route through the appliance itself. Don't be surprised if your locos lurch and pitch across at least one of the routes. You will find that the guard rails are too high by a considerable amount, and there there is a lot of flashing in the flange-ways. Also, the black plastic 'nose' at each frog or rail bend is too high and causes the loco to pitch up. All of these problems, or just one of them if you are lucky, will cause the loco's or tender's wheels to loose contact with the powered rails. The rest shouldn't be a stretch to imagine.
Can I simply file the platics and track sections that are too high and cause problems? Will this be true of all crossings, or could i get lucky and not have any of these problems?
I'm afraid you will have to find that out yourself. I would advise you to mock it up by laying some non-permanent track to see if you can run a locomotive through each route on each crossing. It it all goes smoothly, you may have a rectified batch. If not, you have some work ahead of you.
If it doesn't work well, I will have to get out the Drimmel and start to buzz off the top heavy sections of track and plastic, correct?
That's a bit heavy handed - you'll want to file by hand, with a small file, not a big 10"+ one. You're only looking to smooth things down, not take off a lot of material, and you don;t want to nick up the rails.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Not in my case, Randy. I had to use the cylindrical stone on my hobby rotary tool and had to take quite a bit of material off my guards. I'm probably talking a solid 1/32".
-Crandell
Hmm, old tooling or something? Nothing should be that far out of whack out of the package.
Crandell, that surprises me. It would seem that the Walthers Shinohara crossing would be DCC Friendly. In fact, what is not to be DCC Friendly about a crossing? I don't own any WS crossings, but I do own several Atlas and Peco crossings and they are DCC Friendly. Isn't it your particular track configuration that required gapping of the rails?
Rich
Alton Junction